Evil Never Quits

The Story of David and Goliath and the Need to See Beyond the Surface

You children and adults alike know this story of the young shepherd lad who was probably at that time the average height of a man then, about five and a half feet tall, who went and stood out against the giant Goliath who, not the average height, was some nine and a half feet tall.

And we'll talk a little bit more about him. We know this story, and we know full well what happened. If God willing, we will be able to take a bit of a fresh look at what was really going on here as we go through this this afternoon.

So 1 Samuel 17, let me just read verses one through 11. Please stand as I read God's word. Now the Philistines gathered their armies for battle. And they were gathered at Soco, which belongs to Judah, and encamped between Soco and Ezekiel in Ephes-damim.

And Saul and the men of Israel were gathered and encamped in the Valley of Elah and drew up in line of battle against the Philistines. And the Philistines stood on the mountain on the one side, and Israel stood on the mountain on the other side with a valley between them.

And there came out of the camp of the Philistines a champion named Goliath of Gath, whose height was six and a half cubits and a span. Excuse me, six cubits and a span. He had a helmet of bronze on his head, and it was armed with a coat of mail.

And the weight of the coat was 5 ,000 shekels of bronze. And he had bronze armor on his legs. And a javelin of bronze slung between his shoulders. The shaft of his spear was like a weaver's beam, and the spear's head weighed 600 shekels of iron.

And a shield-bearer went before him. He stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, why have you come out to draw up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not servant to Saul? Choose a man for yourselves, and let him come down to me.

If he's able to fight with me and kill me, then we will be your servants. But if I prevail against him and kill him, then you shall be our servants and serve us. And the Philistine said, I defy the ranks of Israel this day.

Give me a man that we may fight together. When Saul and all Israel heard these words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid. God bless the reading of his word. Please be seated. So I wanna ask you to take a moment, perhaps even close your eyes and concentrate, because I'm gonna ask you in a moment, what you picture from those 11 verses that I just read you.

And I will ask, and it's not a rhetorical question, I'm gonna say, what did you picture? And I just, one or two people in just a few words, not a few sentences, just a few words, tell us what you pictured.

What did you see there? So just focus in on that. Those 11 verses I just read you with these armies encamped and the giant Goliath coming out and making his challenge to Israel who were terrified. Think about it for a moment.

Get yourself a picture in your mind. What do you see? So who wants to tell me what they pictured? What did you see, please? Impending doom, okay. What's somebody else picture? Even you kids can answer.

Anybody else? Okay, if you did not follow my instruction and close your eyes for a moment and try and picture it, raise your hand, you'll be rebuked later. Most of us picture these two armies, both encamped on the high ground, both led by generals who, being militarily competent, were not going to give up the high ground.

You can ask General Lee and pick his charge what it means to give up the high ground or to attack an army entrenched in the high ground. Most of us see these armies and see this giant coming out and yelling insults and deriding the armies of Israel and defying them, basically calling them cowards.

How many saw something like that? How many saw nothing at all? Okay. We're not charismatic, but you can raise your hand. Well, if we pictured the armies, if we pictured the giant, if we pictured his armor, about 125 pounds worth of armor, the man stood about 9 1⁄2 feet tall, then I would pray with the prophet Elisha upon you.

I'd say, oh, Lord, please open their eyes that they may see. Please open your eyes that you may see the reality. What is really going on here? I read the call to worship from Ephesians. We do not wrestle against flesh and blood.

And in that context, when Paul gets to that part of his argument, as we're going to be in a few months with Pastor Brian's series in Ephesians, we're gonna see that he speaks of people. He speaks of human beings and how they relate to one another.

And finally he says, but we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and the spiritual forces of darkness. What stands behind all evil in this world? Then, in David's day, and now?

Well, it's people who execute the will of another. It's people who bring it about. Behind it all are the spiritual forces of darkness. It is a spiritual battle. The title of this message was evil never quits.

Evil never gives up. And so when I go through these verses, I want you to know I'm going to be shamelessly spiritual about them because it is a spiritual issue from start to finish. It's not the armies.

It's not the size of the giant. It's not even totally about Israel's fear and intimidation by this one man who stood out there and challenged them. It's about what stands behind all that. Spiritual forces of darkness.

You know, we need to know who the enemy is. We need to know the nature of the fight in which we are engaged. If we don't know the nature of the fight in which we're engaged, we're going to go in unarmed, and we're going in with the wrong armor.

And if we go into a physical fight and think we're fighting against physical people or arguing against physical human beings, which in one sense we do, but if that's the ultimate way we see it, then it's like going up against a tank with a badminton racket.

It's completely ridiculous because we're not armed for the combat in which we must be engaged. You see, the Philistines here understood what this was all about in some senses better than the Israelites.

I will come to that and how they seemed to know that this was a spiritual battle. They were confident because they knew that the conflict was that, that the conflict was spiritual. And we'll talk about why they had this confidence finally.

It required swords and shields and arrows. Yes, that's all true. Actual men of flesh and blood would actually bleed and die when the armies engaged each other, but ultimately that's not what it's about.

And we need to understand that. If we don't understand that, we go in unarmed. If we don't understand that the battle is spiritual, this is much what Pastor Brian was preaching this morning, we cannot be prepared.

Evil never quits. Our enemy may retire for a while, as in Luke 4 .10, when after the temptations he gave to Jesus Christ, unsuccessfully trying to tempt him to sin, he left for a more opportune time. Evil never quits.

He will return the moment he sees you or me waver in our faith. So they're lined up for battle. They're lined up for battle. Now, Philistines gathered their armies for battle, and they were gathered at Soco, which belongs to Judah, and encamped between Soco and Ezekiel, in Ephes Damim.

And Saul and the men of Israel were gathered and encamped in the Valley of Elah and drew up in line of battle against the Philistines, and the Philistines stood on the mountain on one side, and Israel stood on the mountain on the other side, with the valley between them.

Again, great physical description of the situation they were in. And Israel had lined up confidently against these resurgent Philistines. Resurgent Philistines. Now, why do I say they were resurgent? I say that because they had been defeated over and over and over again by this general of the Israelites, this king of Israel, Saul.

It says in 1 Samuel 14 .48 that Saul was a valiant man. And as we read his victories, not just against the Philistines, but against the Amalekites and the Ammonites and others, he was a great leader. He was a fine warrior.

He led by example. He knew how to defeat the enemy, both in one-on-one combat, it would seem, but especially in how he led the army. And now, here are these Philistines after defeat, after defeat, after defeat.

They're in Israel. They're about 14, 15 miles just west of Bethlehem, David's city. Why are they so confident that they could come in here? What made them think that after all these defeats that they could finally beat this one, this same Israelite army, still under the leadership of this same general?

Was it only because they had this nine-and-a-half-foot giant carrying that 125 pounds of armor? Just one man, is that why? Can you imagine a nine-and-a-half-foot man? You know, years and years ago, in our first home, in the early 1980s, our neighbor was, worked for Alhambra Water, and he delivered up in the Oakland Hills.

And he gave me a chance to go and deliver with him so I could actually see Art Schell, the Hall of Fame offensive guard for the Oakland Raiders. Was he a guard or was he a tackle? He was a guard. Well, I looked him up.

He was 6 '5 and 265 pounds, which is not very big for today's offensive lineman, but I remember looking at him as he picked up a five-gallon bottle with these two fingers and the other five-gallon with these two fingers, threw him over his shoulder and said, thanks.

I turned around. I wasn't allowed to say anything because what's the deal if I got to see him? He was a mountain. I'm 6 '1, he's four inches taller than me. I weighed at the time about 180 pounds. So he's 80, 90 pounds there.

It was like looking at a mountain. You'd almost get dizzy trying to see the top of his head. And here's Goliath, nine-and-a-half feet tall, as I said, and the average height for a man back then was about five-and-a-half feet.

Is he the reason that the Philistines were so confident? Couldn't the Israelites have just gotten a special squad of men, say 12, 18, 24 men, say, you guys go and kill him. Now, some of you are gonna get whacked pretty good, but all you just take care of that one giant and we'll go defeat the Philistines like we had over and over.

Was Goliath the only reason? Well, Matthew Henry speculates the Philistines attacked again, they invaded again, when they heard that the Spirit of God departed from Saul. This makes good sense of the text.

Now, the text doesn't say this specifically, but we do read a previous chapter that the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul. As at the time when he rushed upon David, we covered that a couple of weeks ago, but he departed from Saul.

And then the next thing we know here, they are invading Israel again. So it's good reason to look into the text a little bit without reading too much into it, that the Spirit of God departed from Saul, and it's reasonable to think that the Philistines heard this and therefore thought they could attack again.

This is the reason they were confident. This is why they thought they would now have success when before they had only had defeat after defeat after defeat. It's spiritual because that's what we read in Ephesians six, much later, is spiritual because we read in Goliath's challenge, we read in verse 16 of Goliath's challenge, I should say, that it went on for 40 days, which is obviously a very important symbolic number of days, that for 40 days, they are tempted by this giant coming out here and defying them.

So from start to finish, it's a spiritual matter. So when I ask you, what did you see? What could you picture in your mind's eye when I read those 11 verses, and you saw armies, and you saw spears, and swords, and generals, and a giant?

Well, those were there. But we need to open our eyes and see the reality, the truth behind it all. You see, with Israel's God now absent, or so the Philistines thought, and with their gods now with them, or so they thought, they would prevail, or so they thought.

Pagans, though they were, they understood better than Israel that the battle was a spiritual one. As Jesus says in one of his parables, that the sons of this world are sometimes more discerning, more wise, more clever than the sons of the kingdom.

And here they saw that if the Spirit of God had left him, well, now we can defeat him, because that God is gone, not understanding he's the God of all the earth. But here's what we need to understand as we look at this spiritual conflict, is that the forces of darkness are out there.

They are out there, as the Apostle Paul says in Ephesians 6 and other places, they are out there and they're lined up against you. By faith, you must believe that they are there. And when you forget this, when we ignore that reality, then we become vulnerable.

You'll let down your guard. Now, we're getting into some demonology here. Let me say up front that no, Satan cannot have you if you are in Christ. If the Spirit of God dwells in you, he's not gonna share you with another.

I'm talking about influence. I'm talking about giving into the ways of the world. I'm talking about surrendering ourselves to these things that the prince of the ruler and the ruler of this area, these demonic forces of darkness bring to us and are constantly tempting us with.

When you forget that the battle is spiritual, you let down your guard. Then you leave the high ground and you go in, as it were, down into the valley, mindless of the army of temptations that awaits you.

Now, we need to think for a moment here, if I can say it this way, like the Philistines did, understanding that it's a spiritual battle, understanding that if their God had left them, if that God is no longer with Saul, we've got a chance.

So their thinking was all wrong, except in this one regard. The battle is spiritual. Can never let down our guard because our enemy never stops trying to influence. We can't put down a piece of the armor of God in the rest of that chapter of Ephesians 6 that we started with, unless we have a chink in our armor, in our defenses.

This spiritual armory that the Lord God gives us through Jesus Christ and faith in him. We need it all. As soon as we think we don't, then pride has overtaken us. Be careful how you stand, lest you fall, says the apostle Paul.

You need to understand what the conflict really is. And then take seriously the spiritual resources that the scripture gives us. The challenge is given. The monster shouts out at them. There came out of the camp of the Philistines a champion named Goliath of Gath, whose height was six cubits in span.

He had a helmet of bras on his head and he was armed with a coat of mail and the weight of his coat was 5 ,000 shekels of bronze. I won't read the rest of that. I wanna get to the challenge. Why have you come out to draw up for battle?

Am I not a Philistine? And are you not servants of Christ Jesus, may I say? Choose a man for yourselves. Let him come down to me. Is that man going to be you or me? Are you going to give up the high ground?

Let it never be so. There's a challenge that is constant. The incursions that are looked for are never ending. There's a lot of detail here about Goliath and his armor. What I already said is enough. Nine and a half feet tall with gear that weighed about twice as much as I used to backpack in the Sierras with for a three week hike.

I defy the ranks of Israel this day. Give me a man that we may fight together. Who's behind him? Satan, the devil, all the darkness of the world and who's gonna go down and fight him? Would you go down?

No, one of the most important things other than having that spiritual armor all over us, all the things that the apostle Paul would have and understanding who the enemy really is, is understanding how inadequate you and I are.

When I was first in Bible study fellowship, Wise Warren was the teaching leader. I remember I was very young in the faith. I don't remember what passage he was in, but he said, when Satan comes a knocking on your door, what do you do?

And I was ready to jump up. Boy, I got excited. I said, oh man, I'm gonna bolt the door. Now I'm gonna pull the door back. I'm gonna get there. And before I could make a fool of myself, he said, get down on your knees and you pray.

You pray for humility. You pray for God and his son, Jesus, who's the only one who has the power and the strength and the wherewithal to defeat that enemy. You and I can. You need to have a healthy respect for him.

This challenge is given is all the time. Like I said, the armies of darkness are always lined up against us. Always looking for a chink in the army. Always looking for that weakness. Always looking for that one click, that one crossword to get you thinking, no, that was okay.

I got away with it. Or the scripture's not really against that sort of thing. We need to know what the battle is really about. So the challenge is constant. It's coming at you all the time. And if you think you can handle them on your own, you're fooling yourself.

Your pride is about ready to make you fall. In Moby Dick, the first officer of the Pequod, the whaling boat that went out was Starbuck. And Starbuck was talking about the men who he crewed his whale boat when they went after the whales.

And he said, I will not have a man in my boat who is not afraid of a whale. Now, we don't have to fear or tremble. The Prince of Darkness Grimm, we just sang it, we tremble not for him, but as well as being rightly armed and having the right armor and taking it seriously.

We need to understand how powerful he is. We'll not fear or be afraid, but have a healthy respect for that power which you and I do not have. And only one able to defeat him, only one able to crush him, only one who could crush his head, and that was Jesus Christ and from the cross, not you, not me.

We can pray, we fall down on our knees, and we beg God to keep us safe, to watch over my own soul, to watch over our family's soul, to watch over this church and all of us together. But let us never think that we can go out on our own, sally forth against this giant calling out these challenges to us.

A man named W .J. Knox Little wrote, "'Religion cannot hold its own "'against the power of the world "'except by spiritual forces and trust in God. "'When guardians of religion "'are those who should witness its inward power "'or fail in this trust and in using the right weapons, "'then the world has its way.'".

Do you understand what he just wrote there? It's very insightful. He wrote on this very passage that when we give up our high ground, which is Jesus Christ and faith in him, when we take off our armor, which is the shield of faith and the sword of the spirit and all the rest that he gives us there, it's not just pride, it's giving into the world.

And how do we give into the world? I said it just a few moments ago, we say, did God really say that this is wrong, that I can't satisfy myself here, that I can't give into my anger for a moment, that this is really pride?

Did God really say that? Coming down from that high ground and making yourself vulnerable. You're coming down and you're gonna be outflanked if we continue the military metaphors. How did Israel answer?

You know, before you see the answer, know that our enemy is intimidating. He really is. It's not intimidating if we stand behind Jesus Christ in that sense, but if it was one-on-one, we should be scared to death.

If we didn't have the Lord Jesus Christ between us and those forces, if the Holy Spirit wasn't here keeping us safe, then we'd have good reason for terror. We'd have good reason for fear. I'm talking about a healthy respect.

I'll have no man in my boat who does not fear a whale, who does not fear Satan. In the sense of knowing his power and knowing how inadequate we are against it. So Israel's answer, when Saul and all Israel heard these words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid.

Now, why did they fear so much? Is it only Goliath? As I said, they could have sent down dozens of men and they surely would have been able to defeat him. Why did they fear so much? I think it's what Knox Little wrote just a moment ago.

It's because they'd given up their high ground. They had failed to witness the inner power that is at work in us. They'd failed in their trust in God. It wasn't really the Philistine host. They'd handled them many, many times.

It wasn't Goliath really that caused their fear, not ultimately. Not only did they have no man with courage, strength or skill to contest that one man, they did not know the true nature of the battle.

Spiritual battle for which they relied on weapons of metal. That's why they were scared. That's why they were unable to go forth. You need to have a healthy respect for the strength of the enemy. He's the power of the air.

He's still at work in the sons of disobedience. They're defeated, but still dangerous. Jesus Christ conquered them. And we stand behind our elder brother, the Lord Jesus Christ who has ascended. And yet it is he and he alone who defeated the works of the devil.

It is he and he alone who defeated the law of sin and death. It is Jesus Christ, not you and not me. Do our prayers avail much? Yes, they do. That whole idea of spiritual armor that follows when we have the call to worship in Ephesians 6 really is sort of a prayer.

Lord, keep me in the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. Lord, keep my shield of faith high. And my feet shod in the gospel of peace. It really is sort of a prayer. So the answer, they were dismayed and greatly afraid.

Not in the sense of Starbucks, I'll have no man in my boat who is not afraid of a whale. They didn't have a healthy respect for their enemy. They were terrified of this one man who came out. Israel had in their history defeated the giants of the land.

And yet before that, before they returned to the land, was it not the 10 spies who saw those giants and they were dismayed and greatly afraid as well? Forgetting the Lord God who had defeated the host of Egypt, the most powerful army at the time.

Do you have a history with the Lord Jesus Christ? Has he rescued you? I know I have. We haven't time to even begin to talk about those sorts of things right now. But do you have a history with Jesus Christ?

Beyond your salvation, I mean, in this life, after you knew him as Savior, where he's rescued you from sin, he's kept you from trouble, you look back and you say, only Jesus could have done that. Only the Lord could have saved me from that mess.

Do we know that the battle is spiritual? We must. Do you know that the challenge against you is constant? That the incursions are real? And that when we give up, when we are less vigilant, that our enemy who prowls about like a roaring lion will find you and devour you.

Not ultimately, not finally, if you're in Jesus Christ. But brethren, we needn't go through it. Humility, prayer, a right assessment of who the enemy is and how we need to keep our guard up against him.

First John 4 .4, with this we will close and move into a time of prayer after a hymn. As we learn to trust Jesus and not ourselves, the apostle John writes, little children, you are from God and have overcome them.

And he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. You are from God, you have overcome those enemies, you have overcome those sins. Did you do it because on your own? Did you do it by your own strength, by your own power?

Absolutely not, Jesus Christ did it for us. And he who is in you, that's Christ, who said he and his father would make his home in us. Who said that the spirit would come and reside in you. He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

Trust him and not yourself. Make a right assessment of the enemy against us and know that Christ and Christ only is able to defeat them. And know that Christ and he alone won the victory on our behalf.

And so we can go forward strong and confident in him, in him alone. All the while rightly assessing the strength and the power of our enemy and how circumspect we need to be in our holiness, in our devotion to Christ, in our prayer time, in our devotion to each other as we hold one another up.

And in that, we stand behind the victory that Jesus Christ won. And in him, we have that same victory, amen?